Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 32: Posters: Physics of Cells

BP 32.33: Poster

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 17:15–20:00, Poster B1

Continuous versus Boolean dynamics on simple networks — •Eva Gehrmann and Barbara Drossel — Institut für Festkörperphysik, TU Darmstadt

We compare Boolean dynamics with continuous dynamics on simple network structures, which can be viewed as relevant modules of regulatory networks. The knowledge of regulatory and signaling processes in living cells is often only of qualitative nature, which gave rise to the description as Boolean networks, where the state of each gene is either "on" or "off". In recent years, experiments yielded more quantitative data for regulatory processes and their kinetic parameters. This leads back to the effort to describe processes in the cell with more realistic continuous models, which may give rise to dynamical phenomena that are not accessible with Boolean networks. Continuous models implement the switch-like dynamics of genes by using the sigmoidal Hill function and by using ordinary differential equations to evaluate the time course of the gene expression patterns. We use simple network components and a systematic rule for replacing Boolean functions with continuous functions in order to identify the main differences between the dynamical behavior and the attractor patterns of Boolean and continuous models.